An honorary doctorate will be presented to a retired Brooklyn Heights pastor when St. Francis College, Brooklyn Heights, conducts its Winter Commencement, on Thursday, Jan. 14.

The award will be presented to Father Edward P. Doran, the recently retired pastor of St. Charles Borromeo parish. He had been pastor there since 2008 and has opened the church’s doors numerous times for the College’s special events and ceremonies.

In May 2013, he was appointed dean of Brooklyn’s Deanery No. 3 and in 2014 he also became administrator of Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary parish in the northern part of Brooklyn Heights.

Prior to being ordained a priest, Father Doran was a member of the Marist Brothers for 21 years. He holds a Ph.D. in counseling from St. John’s University, a bachelor’s in education from Marist College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Seton Hall University, South Orange, N.J. He is also an adjunct professor at St. John’s University.

Father Doran will also be a concelebrant of the 2 p.m. Baccalaureate Mass to be celebrated prior to the 3 p.m. commencement. Father Brian Jordan, director of the St. Francis College Campus Ministry, will concelebrate the Mass.
The valedictorian for the commencement is Chantell Chimbo, a management major with a minor in sports management and a 3.9 GPA.

A member of the St. Francis College Duns Scotus Honor Society, she was selected for two education honor societies – Sigma Beta Delta (International Business Management) and Omicron Delta Epsilon (International Economics).
She was also a member of the Accounting Society, Economics Society and Entrepreneur Club. Chimbo held three internships during her time at St. Francis – at Greenhouse Eco-Cleaning, for the MTA and with Madison Square Garden. She also studied abroad in Florence, Italy, which she says helped develop her cooking skills. All of her accomplishments are even more remarkable when you consider that she graduates a semester early, completing her degree in three-and-a-half years.

“I made amazing friends, met amazing mentors, had the opportunity to give back and learned about Franciscan values,” said Chimbo. She plans to put her experience to work in human resource management where she can help people enhance their careers.

Dr. Gerald Galgan, of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, will offer the commencement address. He has spent 50 years in liberal education.

Most recently, he focused on technology and its effect upon human thought and action, as inspired by his interest in the bearing of medieval theological categories on the origin and development of modern philosophical thought.

Co-editor of “Perspectives on 9/11” (Praeger Greenwood, 2004), Dr. Galgan has published articles in The Maine Scholar, Excelsis, American Philosophical Quarterly, Cross Currents, The New Scholasticism, The Political Science Reviewer, and Commonweal.

He is the author of three books: “Interpreting the Present” (University Press of America, 1993); “God and Subjectivity” (Peter Lang, 1990); and “The Logic of Modernity” (New York University Press, 1982). He has appeared on the television show Dialogue on two separate occasions, a two-part series on “The Vision of St. Bonaventure” in 1994, and the 1993 six-part series, “The Mind of St. Augustine.”

Dr. Galgan began teaching at St. Francis College in 1966. He served as department chairman from 1998 to 2000 and was assistant dean of the humanities for St. Francis College from 2000 to 2002.